When it comes to boxing mismatches, Mayweather vs McGregor has certainly got people scratching their heads in dumbfounded confusion. The undefeated boxing God – Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather taking on the Notorious UFC champion Conor McGregor. But did you know there were many more mismatches that make this look like a legitimate boxing match?
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You see, with the latest boxing odds heavily in Mayweather’s favor (-450 to McGregor’s +333 as the time of writing), it’s easy to just assume this fight is going to be a one-sided affair, but yet more money has been placed on Conor to prevail against the odds. But one question that betting odds don’t answer is “what the match will actually be like?”
Many mismatches have occurred in the past, and they’ve produced some very lacklustre battles – from short and not-so violent, to long and downright boring. But these mismatches brought together fighters far more dramatically different from McGregor and Mayweather. Here are five of them.
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- Arturo Gatti vs. Floyd Mayweather – Mayweather has quite the record, facing Arturo Gatti on June 25th. Promoted on a massive scale as a fight for the ages (billed as “thunder & lightning”), the fight was eventually described by HBO analyst Max Kellerman as the “biggest pay-per-view mismatch since Lennox Lewis vs. Mike Tyson.”
- Mike Tyson vs. Lennox Lewis – Speaking of the above, this was another big sell-out of a boxing match, selling all 19,185 tickets at prices of up to $2400. With quite the circus of a press conference, which resulted in Tyson having to pay Lewis $335,000 for biting his leg during a brawl (this incident left Lennox with a scar), it became clear it was a mismatch as Lennox absolutely punished Tyson at The Pyramid. After a crushing roundhouse right hand to the chin, Tyson didn’t meet the count in the eighth.
- Floyd Mayweather vs Henry Bruseles – Mayweather is quite the regular in one-sided bouts, it seems! Going back to 2005, Floyd absolutely destroyed Henry to set up the bout with Gatti. Referee Jorge Alonzo stopped the fight before the eighth round expired, as Mayweather finished him off with a strong left hook that left him reeling. Surprisingly, this victory came in spite of Uncle and Trainer Roger Mayweather’s advice in the match corner. After a heated argument, Mayweather knew his tactics, saying “I knew I was going to drown [Bruseles] in deep water eventually.”
- Wladimir Klitschko vs. Ray Austin – Fast forward to 2007, and we see a truly dominant performance from Wladimir Klitschko against Ray Austin – stopping him in the second round. The Ukrainian knocked Austin down 87 seconds into the second round. He got up, looking dazed and Eddie Cotton stopped the fight quickly seeing his condition.
- Roy Jones Jr. vs. Glen Kelly – And now, probably one of the more embarrassing mismatches out there, it threw the entire IBF upside down and into disarray. Kelly was ranked #1 by the Foundation, but he was knocked down in the third round, once in the sixth and yet again in the seventh. That final one was especially humiliating, as Jones put both hands behind his back and taunted Kelly. Once Glen moved in for a jab, Jones went over it with a right hook to the
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